Rhiannon Chatnoir's blog

This Friday, July 12th, Nonprofit Commons is happy to welcome Sami Petersen (SHIFTscoliosis in SL), who will present to NPC on her personal journey, her org's mission and the power of digital storytelling. Sami was diagnosed with scoliosis at the age of 11, underwent spinal fusion surgery at the age of 15, and now at the age of 16, is the founder of the nonprofit Shift Scoliosis. SHIFT Scoliosis' video won for the Best in Health category in the TechSoup Digital Storytelling Contest.

About Sami Petersen:

Sami Petersen is 16 years old and the founder of SHIFT Scoliosis. She was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 11 and underwent spinal fusion surgery at the age of 15 to correct her then 60 degree scoliosis curve. She is now fused from thoracic level 3 to lumbar level 4 - almost her whole back! Her curve was corrected to just 9 degrees and she no longer in extreme pain. The experience inspired her to give back to the scoliosis community and help others, while spreading awareness and educating others about the condition. She started SHIFT Scoliosis in order to make those goals come true!

About SHIFT Scoliosis:

SHIFT Scoliosis believes every person is beautiful and perfect just the way they are regardless of whether or not they have health problems. Our goals are to provide information and support for individuals and families who are impacted by scoliosis. Our second goal is to provide education to those not touched by scoliosis to create a strong and supportive world community. By promoting knowledge of scoliosis and how it impacts those who are affected, we hope to encourage a better understanding of this condition which changes the lives of so many.

How can we use new technologies to provide greater equality in the 21st century? This Friday, June 28th, Nonprofit Commons is happy to feature Elle Waters (Nethermind Bliss in SL) who will be leading a discussion on digital inclusion as a civil right and highlighting the exciting innovations in technology that provide greater access for people with disabilities. She will discuss some of the history behind the fight for global accessibility awareness, and examples where accessibility has been successfully used as a powerful tool to create a better experience for everyone. Elle will discuss the paradigm shift from compliance to cutting-edge at some companies, and she will demonstrate pragmatic techniques using examples from newly launched and not-yet-published solutions from enterprise projects.

About Elle Waters

Elle has been working in online spaces for over 15 years, always with the goal to promote equality and collaboration on the web. After years of evangelism and leading projects within virtual worlds, online communities, and social media channels, she started a career as the web accessibility coordinator at a large Fortune 100 company. While there, she focused primarily on implementation strategies for design, development, and process teams across the enterprise. Working with internal and external teams to build a corporate program from the ground up, Elle built the business case and established accessibility as an integral part of both the design strategy and the software development lifecycle, institutionalizing the process and creating a framework for long-term success.

Now, many years later with many lessons learned, Elle supports the enterprise strategy and business development needs of Simply Accessible, a leading UX firm that delivers insightful and creative accessibility consulting to Fortune 500 corporations, educational institutions, public utilities, government agencies and other private sector clients. She works directly with clients to form strategic solutions to problems and outline a roadmap to ensure that their websites can be successful and sustainable in meeting or exceeding accessibility requirements.

When Elle presents publicly, she usually speaks on topics ranging anywhere from enterprise accessibility strategy to leveraging accessibility as a tool to inspire innovation and transform an organization’s culture. Occasionally, she indulges in discussions about the gamification of accessibility and motivational design. Past speaking engagements include CSUN, John SlatinAccessU, Code PaLOUsa and several accessibility camps across the country. When not looking to start a revolution, Elle enjoys virtual worlds, zombie lore, and video games.

This Friday, June 21st, TechSoup's NonProfit Commons in Second Life will be featuring a discussion led by our own community manager Joyce Bettencourt (Rhiannon Chatnoir in SL), who will be holding a virtual media camp and sharing insights on audio and video media skills to incorporate with virtual worlds. We will explore topics such as audio and video recording, streaming and mixed-reality, and discuss how these could be used for organizations.

This Wednesday, June 19th, at 4:00 PM PDT/SLT several members of the NonProfit Commons in Second Life (NPC) community will be taking part in a "Meet the Community" discussion, as part of the Second Life 10th annual Birthday celebration (SL10B).

This Friday, June 14th, Nonprofit Commons is happy to welcome SaffiaWiddershins, who will share with us some of the highlights of the resident-run Second Life 10th Anniversary Birthday (SL10B). The event kicks off this weekend, running from June 16th to June 29th, with twenty sims of community, creativity and events.

Join us while we look back at a decade of the virtual world Second Life and look forward by discussing possible visions for the future.

Join us in Second Life!

Nonprofit Commons Weekly Meeting

Friday, June 14th, 8:30 AM PDT / SLT

Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheater

http://bit.ly/NPCinSL

AGENDA

• 8:30 am Introductions

• 8:40 am TechSoup Announcements

• 8:45 am Mentors Central

• 9:00 am Featured Presentation - SaffiaWiddershins of SL10B

• 9:30 am Open Mic / Announcements

http://nonprofitcommons.org

The mission of the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life is to create a community for nonprofits to explore and learn about virtual worlds, foster connections, and discover the many ways in which nonprofits might utilize the unique environment of Second Life to achieve their missions.

Paul Doherty is a physicist, author, teacher, and the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the Exploratorium. He is the discoverer of the shape of Martian Snowflakes, was author of The Explorabook, and he loves teaching online courses.

The Exploratorium uses the virtual world to prototype exhibits for the real world museum. For example, The new exhibit Twinkling Suppressor, which still works better in SL than RL, as well as the design for the human ride-able Newton's cradle. (See images below.) They run mixed reality events streaming coverage of eclipses and planetary transits into Second Life while showing the virtual audience on screens in the real life museum. It allows them to build exhibits quickly following real life events, three days after the Tsunami in Japan, EmileighStarbrook built a model of the type of reactor that was destroyed by the tsunami. A Japanese video producer then used this model in her program describing the failure of the reactor. When an asteroid threatened to collide with Mars in 2007 they made a model of the impact, and now in 2014 a comet threatens Mars again.

They also host Virtually Speaking Science in their sim, and present occasional Saturday Science lectures. The experience gained by presenting science lectures virtually has helped the Exploratorium gain insight as they run their online workshops for teachers. Their sister sim in Second Life houses the Splo Museum; having the Splo allows them to experiment with exhibits that might be too edgy for the real life museum, for example they have a building that houses virtual exhibits that make fun of exhibits at the physical museum in San Francisco. The sims are supported by funders both inside Second Life, as well as grants from foundations and individuals.

This Friday, June 7th, Nonprofit Commons is happy to welcome back Kevin Feenan (PhelanCorrimal in SL) who will be giving us an update on this year's VWBPE 2013 conference taking place July 24 - 27th across multiple virtual worlds, with presentations in Second Life, OpenSim, Unity/Jibe, and Cloud Party.

Virtual worlds offer an almost endless palette of opportunities to perform and create in order to go beyond the stage.

This Friday, May 31st, TechSoup'sNonProfit Commons is happy to welcome back Marnie Webb, of Caravan Studios to update us on their recent idea/solution Generator sessions (http://caravanstudios.wikispaces.com/Generators) they have been running with civic and social organizations on topics such as disaster relief, animal welfare, violence, food rescue and more to come,

And we will talk on this weekend's National Civic Day of Hacking, a US nationwide event focused on people coming together from both the community, organizational and coder/designer level to try to work on solutions for current civic needs.

Are you a techie or do-gooder interested in digital storytelling, online community, emerging technologies, or all of the above? You definitely won't want to miss TechSoup's4th annual Digital Storytelling Screening and Awards Party on Tuesday, May 28 at 7pm PDT / SLT.

The event will feature a screening of top story submissions with an awards ceremony for the winners! Digital Storytelling videos came in from all around the world and even some from NPC community members.

Join us virtually at NonProfit Commons in Second Life, where we will get together for a mixed reality drive-in event, complete with our own red carpet and pixel popcorn!

Bring your favorite virtual vehicle or grab a seat in one of our's, dress red-carpet snazzy and come ready to chat storytelling, have fun and network!

We will be streaming live the event from San Francisco and our virtual event and avatars will be up on the screen at the real event. And, If you will be in San Francisco, you can register to attend in person the red carpet event at PARISOMA! More info on the live event: http://bit.ly/190qGoG

This Friday, May 24th, Nonprofit Commons is happy to feature Paul Doherty (Patio Plasma in SL), Senior Scientist at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco, CA, who will present about immersive science exhibits and learning projects, as well as the experience of the Exploratorium running the oldest Science Museum sims in Second Life.